The Wanderer
by M306117
Summary: What was supposed to be a routine job turns out to have greater repercussions for two bounty hunters in the NCR as they follow the trail of a suspect in power armour, finding themselves embroiled in a quest that stretches all the way back to the East Coast of America...
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

The harsh desert sun shone down with total impunity, boiling away any clouds foolish enough to form and roasting any people foolish enough to step foot outside during the day, bleaching the ground a sterile white that made looking anywhere a painful experience.

John squinted for the umpteenth time that day as he used the back of his hand to wipe away no small amount of sweat from his forehead, squaring his cap back into place as he took a knee beside some disturbed dirt. Behind him, Gaz dropped to his knee as well but cast his eyes outwards, hand wrapped around the grip of his hunting rifle, wary of a potential ambush as John directed his attention to the disturbed dirt.

It was nothing more than a half filled boot print, dust and sand stirred up by wind performing the painstaking task of erasing the imperfection in the desert, but John nevertheless felt a trill of excitement run up his spine. The impression matched that of a T-45's boot, the exact same model of power armour their quarry wore, and the fact the print was only half filled meant they were gaining. They still had a few days of hard travelling to go before they might catch a glimpse of the power armour wearing individual, but it was a whole lot better than being on a trail that was weeks, months, old.

John stood and Gaz did the same, the younger of the duo watching the elder with eyes eager to learn all they could about not only surviving out in wastes but also tracking the most elusive prey to inhabit it: humans.

They were both bounty hunters, John a five year veteran and Gaz a reconditioned tribal looking to give the job a shot, and their target was mostly unknown, the few concrete facts pertaining to the armour he wore and the locations he visited. Everything else was pure speculation, like where they had come from and why they were assaulting military facilities.

'Getting close,' John said.

'You've been saying that for a week,' Gaz said. 'Since we started this job, actually. How close _is_ close?'

'A few days, maybe,' John said. 'So quit bitching. That twenty-grand is as good as ours.'

'You mean ten-grand,' Gaz mumbled. 'Half that money is mine.'

'Maybe,' John said. 'Anything could happen in the next few days. I could die, you could die, or someone else could swoop in and kill our guy before us.'

'Hey, I'm the pessimist here. Leave all the negative thoughts to me.'

'Okay.'

* * *

 **Four weeks ago**

The sun, while less harsh than it would be in a month, was still blinding enough to turn the sand and rocks and dust of New California white and abuse the travellers walking along the old roads and new trails that littered the land, making them sweat and wish for cooler climes or a bottle of Nuka-Cola. One such traveller was John, grimacing at the light and tugging at the collar of his armoured vest as he remained crouched behind an outcropping of rocks, a well used and well maintained service rifle resting in a small groove he had made.

His mind wasn't occupied with thoughts of catching the power armoured bounty or of spending the twenty-thousand dollar reward that came upon providing proof of death, or capture, but on an approaching gang of four men, two humans and two ghouls, known to the New California Republic as the Gecko Gang and known to any bounty hunters who were interested as a payday of two-thousand dollars.

Their list of crimes mainly consisted of robbing stores and shooting the occasional patron who tried to make a stand, showing they could be ruthless when the need arose, and spread from one end of the region to the other. They were a problem, certainly, and beyond the capabilities of the various police units given how often they moved around, but they were still too small time to be of any interest to the Rangers.

It was the grey area between the two that most bounty hunters operated, tracking down and catching or killing the various ne'er-do-wells roaming New California to make it a better place to live for those who worked hard and did right by their neighbours. Sometimes they worked alongside the police to catch their foes, and rarer still with the Rangers on the more dangerous bounties.

John had worked his fair share of bounties with both sides, more so the Rangers than the police given he was a reservist within the NCR Army and cooperation with the elite troops of New California was easier to come by as a result of that, but mostly he worked alone. He knew being part of a team could make some things easier but at the same time, personal experience taught him he couldn't always rely on those behind him when push came to shove.

So he maintained his lonely vigil in the rocks, one eye on the approaching gang and the other on the terrain for any surprises that might crop up.

He saw none so he relaxed a little, shouldering his rifle and training it onto the predetermined kill zone he had scoped out a scant one hundred metres from his little eyrie. It was within the range of his rifle and well within John's ability to shoot four moving targets, it had the sun at his back to blind the Gecko Gang and keep them disorientated that little bit extra, and it had natural cover and concealment. All they would see, provided they managed to pinpoint his location, was a lee between two rocks and a dark shape where they joined.

The gang was about a mile away from the kill zone and drawing steadily closer, walking shoulder to shoulder at a leisurely pace. What few weapons they carried, revolvers chambered in .357 magnum and a single cowboy repeater, were holstered and the armour they wore was ramshackle, pieced together from random sources with no uniformity to it, and would provide no protection at all. In a way, it reminded John of his own protective gear, cobbled together from various sources to create a unique ensemble, but where the four men had thrown everything together from what they could scavenge, John had done so with great care and deliberation.

At its core, his outfit was that of a wasteland doctor's with the bandolier and chest plate from an NCR trooper's uniform providing additional protection and storage, as did the belt from a set of reinforced leather armour, while the jacket from a roving trader provided protection from the elements and helped hide the armour from casual observations. On his head sat a rattan cowboy hat to try and keep the sun at bay, augmented by some dark aviator sunglasses, and round his neck were a pair of goggles and a shemagh for any dust storms that might arise in the wastes.

It could get a little, or a lot, hot when wearing it all together and John often left his jacket unzipped to help keep him cool but then, in the Californian wasteland, anybody wearing anything more than a T-shirt and thin trousers was going to get warm. At least this way, he could carry everything he needed in easy to reach pockets and reduce his reliance on a rucksack, relegating it to just carrying spare supplies and his food and drink, and when people looked his way they mistook him for some sort of explorer or trader, not a bounty hunter, which was fine by John.

He wanted people to underestimate him, or to see him as anything but a threat, so he could use that anonymity to sneak up on his prey and learn all he could without raising any suspicion. It had worked before on numerous occasions like yesterday, when he had watched the Gecko Gang from inside the same bar as they played a hand of Caravan, sharing glances with most of them when they won a hand.

Nothing he had seen gave him any cause for concern, seeing only a gang of four enjoying themselves between robberies and spending some of their ill-gotten gains on beer and food, and nothing he saw as they approached his chosen patch of ground detracted from that.

Until Gaz appeared.

John had seen him only once before, in the same bar as the Gecko Gang the previous day, instantly pegging him for a bounty hunter by the duster he wore and the revolver strapped to his thigh, albeit a green one at that given the lack of scarring his features bore, and by the fact he was in the same bar as a group with a price on their heads. Seldom few people travelled along the route they were on, preferring the more lively ones that ran through all the different towns and settlements in the NCR, which had been reflected by the dowdy appearance of the bar and the town itself.

With a permanent population barely into double digits, calling the place a town seemed overly generous. It didn't have a name, at least not one the eight or nine people who lived there could agree on, so to see three different sets of travellers in such an insignificant place all at once was more than a little suspicious. Well, to John it seemed suspicious but he was a cynical person, no more a believer in coincidences than magical fairies that granted wishes.

He knew that Gaz would try and take down the Gecko Gang before too long, and would probably die in the process, so John had left the dusty town before anyone else had gotten up and walked out into wastes until he found his perch, putting the rising sun to his back and his rifle towards his would be targets, and settled in to wait for their arrival.

In that time he saw a smaller cluster of rocks down by the road, just a bit closer to the town but on the opposite side of the trail to him. They provided an adequate ambush position, provided no other alternatives were available, offering concealment from view but not for a person returning fire. Whoever hid behind them would have to expose too much to be safe when they began shooting.

But, Gaz hadn't thought of that and instead banked on catching the Gecko Gang unaware to do the job, popping up once they drew within range of his revolver and firing at the nearest target. Either by luck or some natural talent, his first round struck home and threw one of the gang into the dirt where they began turning the dirt beneath them red with blood. Gaz's second round wasn't so lucky, or his innate talent only went so far, because the bullet hit nothing but air, forced to miss by the recoil of the high powered magnum load throwing off the young hunter's aim.

John watched, with no small amount of astonishment, as Gaz brought his weapon down and lined up a third shot even before the muzzle of his gun was level once again, loosing off a third shot that missed its mark and left him vulnerable as, by this point, the remaining gang members had drawn their guns and levelled them at the half exposed attacker.

Before a fourth shot could roar from Gaz's revolver, the nearest of the gang took aim and fired, just once, and hit him. Gaz span with the wound, revolver slipping from his fingers, and fell to the floor to begin bleeding all over it. This was the point that John recovered from his stupor and added his firepower into the mix, firing four times to hit three targets as they made a move to finish off the now prone Gaz, standing once the last echo faded to descend the slopes.

After making sure the four gangsters were actually dead, he went to check on their would be attacker as he lay on the ground, hand clutched to a wound in his shoulder.

'Dumbass,' was the first thing John said to him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

'Dumbass.'

The first word John had uttered to Gaz was little more than an insulting epitaph, a succinct summary of his skills so far as a bounty hunter and of his tactical awareness, but it was at odds with his follow up action of taking a knee beside the wounded man and pulling out a small medical kit from his rucksack, plucking a stimpack and some bandages from within and applying them to the wound.

As far as bullet wounds went, it was as minor an injury one could expect to suffer. The round, a low powered and fully jacketed affair, had made a clean entry hole in the meaty part of Gaz's upper right arm, missing the major arteries and the bone, and made its exit through another clean hole, this one slightly bigger.

As far as wounds went, it was still pretty bad. Blood was coming out of two newly created breaches in an otherwise sealed system, all manner of hostile bacteria would be surging towards the wounds to run the risk of sepsis and infection, and the nerve endings would be absolutely screaming at Gaz about the fact he had been injured. If he wasn't used to such wounds by now, the overload of pain might run the risk of making him pass out, or go into shock.

John was quick to inject the stimpack's contents into Gaz's arm and wrap the two bandages around the wounds, tying them off and easing his newly acquired patient onto his back before holding the injured arm up, keeping the wound elevated above his heart as was taught by the NCR Army to all its soldiers and doing so with a speed and confidence that spoke of years of experience. Almost as an afterthought, he propped Gaz's feet up on the young man's own rucksack while he kept a careful watch on his face.

It was white as a sheet and covered in sweat, Gaz's eyes staring blankly at the harsh sky above, but he was breathing and his pulse, whilst racing along, was steady and strong, all promising signs.

'Dumbass,' Gaz repeated quietly. 'Yeah.'

'You took one down,' John said.

'Yeah,' Gaz said. 'One.'

He sighed and closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly, and added, 'The problem was the other three.'

'The problem was your gun,' John said, casting a glance at the discard weapon as it lay just a few feet away.

It was a .44 Magnum revolver, a powerful gun in its own right and known for reliability and stopping power, and popular for both its ease of maintenance and association with the west. Guns just like this had helped tame the wild lands of America's western coast, sported by cowboys and gunslingers as they herded cattle or fought off Indians and bandits, becoming such an iconic symbol that even now, two centuries after the bombs had fallen, it was still held in the hearts of everyone.

That wasn't to say it was the best gun out there. After all, it held only six rounds in an age where semi-automatic pistols held two or three times as many shots for similar or smaller weights, and the rate of fire was slow compared to pistols like the one John carried, as was reloading, which could often be the difference between life and death, and the intense recoil given off by the Magnum round could often force the barrel up and away from the target if the shooter didn't brace enough, as had happened to Gaz.

But, saying it was the poorer choice in firearms was like saying how rare should a steak be. No weapon was perfect, having good points and bad, with each individual's needs determining which weapon would suit them best. Revolvers were great for people who didn't use them on a regular basis, or just needed something for basic self defence against home invaders, while semi-automatics were more for those who actively went looking for trouble and needed to project a lot of firepower.

Animated discussions could spring up in groups of wasteland veterans, each swearing by their chosen weapon and denouncing what others might have to say, and among the more vicious they could become a demonstration of why they were their chosen guns. John had so far managed to avoid such instances, stumbling across the bloody aftermath of such a 'discussion' once or twice, quietly explaining why he used a service rifle and a 9mm pistol whilst respecting the opinions of others.

Both weapons had served him well in the NCR Army and he saw no reason to replace them now, each offering sufficient firepower and accuracy for his chosen profession, backed up by a cheap and steady source of both ammunition and parts from the numerous Gunrunner kiosks in all the major towns and cities. As the saying went, if it ain't broke...

'What's wrong with my gun?' Gaz asked.

'Nothing,' John said. 'It's just the wrong one for you.'

Gaz opened his eyes and looked at the elder bounty hunter, confused, prompting John to add, 'Look, no offence, but you're a scrawny guy. I could probably wrap my hand around your wrist using my little finger and thumb, and that-' He pointed at the Magnum. '-is a heavy weapon with a lot of recoil. You need to properly brace yourself when you fire and that requires muscles, which is why you missed your second shot.'

He pulled out his own pistol and held it above Gaz, mindful of the trigger.

'This would be more your speed, or a .357 like they had, until you've built up the necessary muscle to handle a .44.'

'But that's not a bounty hunters weapon,' Gaz began.

'It is in this day and age,' John said. 'Things have changed since the 1800s.'

'Before you say anything,' John added, holding up a warning finger when Gaz opened his mouth. 'Those guys you read about in the papers? The ones who readily style themselves on the gunslingers of old? They pick and choose their targets with much care and deliberation, making sure that revolvers and repeaters alone will be enough, and the newspapers publish their stories with some amount of embellishment to sell more copies.

'The bounty hunters get a small percentage of the profits, making it a win-win scenario for both parties.'

'Oh,' Gaz said.

'Don't get me wrong,' John said. 'Some guys do use revolvers to great effect but, unlike you, they've trained with them and they know how to handle the recoil. And they know what kind of foes they can manage.'

'Oh,' Gaz said, a little more despondent.

John shook his head a little and holstered his pistol, lowering Gaz's arm and going over to the four dead gang members lying on the floor to pat them down and strip everything of value from their corpses, amassing a pile of drugs, caps and assorted junk he dumped next to Gaz, followed swiftly by their guns and bags.

'What are you doing?' Gaz asked.

'Sorting through their stuff,' John said. 'They don't need it anymore, do they?'

'I guess not.'

The guns were all the same model, a .357 revolver that had seen plenty of use both before and after the Great War, and John mix and matched parts from all four to create a superior weapon that he put to one side, followed by all the ammunition and the cowboy repeater after giving it a quick once over. Next up were the bags, all roughly hewn items made of brahmin hide but adequate for the task of holding supplies, though nothing John might want for himself. His rucksack was still perfectly suited to its task and of a much higher quality, boasting actual clasps and straps with padding.

He had a quick sort through the drugs, Jet mostly with the occasional dose of Psycho and Med-X, stowing them in an empty pocket and stashing the medical supplies with his own, and once he was finished he sat back on his haunches and looked at Gaz.

'Why'd you do it?' he asked.

'Do what?' Gaz asked back. 'Try and take them down? For the payout.'

'No, become a bounty hunter,' John said. 'It's not an easy profession, and not for most people, either.'

'Why do you care?'

'I'm curious, is all, and passing the time. You're not going anywhere anytime soon. So come on, spill.'

Gaz gave him a strange looking before shrugging and relenting, saying, 'I guess I was swayed by the romanticism of it all. A sole, stoic hero fending off the evils of the world with his wits and guile, tied to no one place and free to come and go as he pleases, adored by all. What's not to like?'

'So, you're just in it for the glory?' John said.

'No,' Gaz shot back with a sharp tone. 'Not only. I wanna help people too and I figured being a bounty hunter was the best way to do it.'

'Why not join the army, or the police?'

'Too regimented, too strict,' Gaz said. 'I like having the freedom of going where I want, when I want, and how I want.' He shrugged again. 'Guess that's what happens when you grow up as a tribal in your formative years. You get a taste for the kind of freedom civilisation doesn't offer.'

'Fair enough,' John said. 'Which tribe?'

'Inland,' Gaz said. 'We lived up in the mountains somewhere, around this crashed plane thing. I think it was flying to the airport in the Boneyard when the bombs fell.'

'Probably,' John said. 'And yeah, you'd be living inland if there are mountains.'

'What?' Gaz said, throwing John a quizzical look. 'No, we were the Inland Tribe. That was our name. I think it was the name of the country the plane flew from, give or take a few decades of linguistic erosion.'

'Probably,' John said again. 'Can't say I've heard of any country with a name like that.'

But then, that wasn't saying much. He barely knew the names of the other states in America, let alone other countries. He knew of California, Nevada, Arizona and Oregon, but beyond that? Nothing.

'Maybe someday,' Gaz said wistfully. Then, becoming slightly more upbeat, asked of John, 'Why did you become a bounty hunter?'

'I was NCR Army,' John began. 'Five years. Signed up in 2272 and got to be part of the first wave into the Mojave, and mustered out just after the First Battle of Hoover Dam at the rank of sergeant. They offered to extend my service but I'd had my fill of frontline duty for the moment, so I became a reservist instead.'

'Were you any good?' Gaz asked. 'I mean, I know you're great at taking four guys by surprise but that doesn't really paint the whole picture.'

'I was okay,' John said. 'Above average, actually, but not exceptional. Good with a rifle, solid tactical awareness, great leadership skills, but not enough to qualify for trying out for the Rangers. Those guys are in a whole other class. Still, I hold my own against criminal scum like them pretty well.'

He jerked his thumb towards the corpses of the Gecko Gang as Gaz raised his head to look at them, dropping it back down after a moment.

'So how do you go from above average NCO to bounty hunter?' Gaz asked. 'The steady paycheque? The easy work?'

'Yeah,' John said with a small smile.

'Seriously.'

John let his smile fade and shrugged, saying, 'I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs. When you're on the frontlines pushing east, you see a lot of misery you can understand. Ferals, savage tribals, rampant robots, things that have a good reason as to why they're causing issues. Look west, back towards civilisation, and you see people who don't have those same excuses making life harder than it already is.

'Coming out of the army after five years of securing land for people to live in and seeing that, you can't help but feel a little bit pissed off. You feel like asking what was the point of it all? I've shed sweat and blood, broken bones and lost close friends, all for people to go around killing each other for scraps of food and bits of paper? No.

'So I took my pay, went to the nearest Gunrunner store and bought my gear, and never looked back. Well, aside from when the Legion managed to take control of New Vegas and the Mojave after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. I got called back to active duty to help deal with that, following the Rangers on their march back to Vegas to kill Caesar and that Courier bitch. C-something. Clarence or Chloe or Clarissa. Doesn't matter.'

'You helped liberate Vegas?' Gaz asked.

'No,' John said. 'I was a reservist who'd been out for four years by then. They stuck me behind the front, guarding our logistical support against Legion surprises and helping train fresh recruits, and then as soon as we'd secured the Mojave I was cut loose again, letting me get back to bounty hunting.'

'Lucky for me they did,' Gaz muttered. 'Otherwise I'd be sporting a few more holes right about now.'

'Yeah,' John said in agreement. 'Maybe.'

He shrugged again and pushed over the revolver and repeater, adding, 'Here, for those times when I'm not around.'

Gaz sat up at that and gave John a quizzical frown, looking down at the two weapons and their associated ammunition as though he didn't comprehend their function.

'You what?' he said.

'I'm not gonna follow you around forever,' John said. 'And you want to evoke the iconic image of gunslingers of old, so here. A revolver and a cowboy repeater. They'll help you be slightly more successful than you are currently, they'll teach you how to manage recoil, and you can still stick with your mental image of a bounty hunter.'

'What, you think I'm still cut out for this job?' Gaz gave a mirthless laugh. 'My first confrontation with my targets, my first _job_ , and I would've died if not for you. You really think I'm bounty hunter material after that?'

John gave a non-committal shrug and said, 'Bad day at the office. We all have them, even the veteran guys like me. My third or fourth bounty, I came close to dying as well. Some lucky raider got the drop on me and put a bullet in my leg. Damn near bled out from that, but I didn't let that deter me. I picked myself up and kept on going.

'Good thing too, or you'd be dead right about now and a couple dozen other scumbags would still be roaming the wastes.'

'Yeah, but even with surprise on my side I only managed to shoot one of the guys,' Gaz said. 'That's not just a bad day at the office, that's a bad bounty hunter.'

'Perhaps,' John said, jerking his head towards the rock the younger man had hidden himself behind. 'Why there?'

'Coz I only had a revolver,' Gaz said. 'Not a rifle like you. I needed somewhere close by and low down that I could crouch behind, otherwise I might as well have been spitting at them.'

'Okay,' John said. 'And how long were you on their trail?'

'A few weeks. Most of it what I heard were rumours and gossip with the occasional robbed store to go on. Not really much, to be honest.'

'Okay,' John said a second time. 'And you still think you're a bad bounty hunter?'

'Yeah,' Gaz said, a dark look creeping onto his face. 'Why?'

'Because I think you did all right,' John said. 'You've some knack for reading the terrain based on what you have to hand, and you're managed to catch up to the targets a little quicker than me, and with much less experience behind you. Weapon choice could do with some work but we've sorted that out now, haven't we?'

Gaz just blinked at that, no doubt expecting a much more scathing dressing down from the guy who had saved his life rather than praise for his innate skill, and gave John a confused look, too.

'Seriously,' the older bounty hunter said. 'With a bit of work and some experience, you could make for a decent freelance lawman in your own right. You just need to realise that for yourself, to see past today's events, and put what you learned today into practise to prevent a repeat.

'Hell, even _I_ make mistakes sometimes, like when I was setting up my little post in the hills. I should have done a quick sweep of the immediate area to make sure there were no surprises, including down behind this rock, but I got a little lazy and hoped for the best. As a result, you got the drop on me as well.'

'I did?' Gaz said, perking up a little.

'Yeah,' John said. 'You did, so suck it up. Nobody's perfect. If we were, the world wouldn't be the radioactive ruin it is today and people like us wouldn't be needed. Okay?'

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'Yeah, right. Right.'

He looked down at the weapons John had pushed over, the revolver and the cowboy repeater and the pile of ammunition he had placed into a rough bag, and then at the four dead bodies who had only a few minutes ago been trying to kill him, before turning to John.

'Thanks.'


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

The walk back into town was quick and quiet given they were less than an hour from the nameless settlement and Gaz was still pale from shock, and their stop there was just as short. Nobody who lived there had medical skills superior to John's, nor the supplies needed to properly tend to the wound Gaz sported, so they lingered just long enough to refill their canteens from a rusty water pump and buy some scraps of jerky from a one-eyed shopkeeper before setting out again.

After another hour of walking through the deserts, though, the colour had started returning to Gaz's face, and with it came conversation.

'So,' Gaz began.

'So,' John replied.

'Where are you from?'

'The Hub.'

'Really?' Gaz said. 'I've never been there myself. Is it really as big as people say?'

'Yeah,' John said. 'It _is_ the central trading hub in all of the NCR, after all. People tend to flock towards a place that offers money and security.'

'What's it like?' Gaz asked.

'It's okay,' John said. 'There are good points, and there are bad ones.'

Which could be said of a lot of places within New California, perhaps all of them. On the face of it all, the Hub appeared to be a prosperous and thriving community given the huge amount of trade that rolled through, attracting merchants and caravans from all over as a place to rest up, make a deal or start their trading careers, and boasted fresh water and security from an aquifer and a moderate police force respectively.

Of course, there was a seedy side to the town that people didn't often see. Set back from the main areas of travel and tourism were the low income areas, filled with vagrants and the homeless who couldn't find work for one reason or another, small time gangs of criminals looking to extort wandering tourists of their valuables, and the groups with much grander, albeit more sinister, goals of asserting their control over the Hub's massive economic potential by whatever means necessary.

Even at the higher levels of government, politics kept the people who should have been focusing on the wellbeing of their citizens from actually doing that, making backroom deals to gain more influence or weaken their opponents, while some maintained a facade of caring to worm their way into positions of power before revealing their true selves.

'Do you go home all that often?' Gaz asked.

'Sometimes,' John said. 'Usually if there's a decent enough bounty hanging around.'

'Don't your parents get annoyed at that?'

'They're dead,' John said. 'My dad overdosed on Jet when I was five, and my mom died shortly after I joined the army.'

'Oh,' Gaz said quietly. 'I... I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' John said. 'She was always hitting the bottle and it apparently got worse once I left. Word has it she started working at some worthless brothel to feed her habit and got knifed by some raider hopped up on Psycho, just because he liked fucking dying whores.'

'What?' Gaz said, alarmed. 'Seriously?'

'Yup,' John said. 'Seriously. But, he didn't get far. The pimp who ran my mom came at the raider with a gun, scoring some critical hits, but the raider stuck that same knife in him before bleeding out.'

'Damn, man,' Gaz said with a shake of his head. 'Just... damn.'

John shrugged. 'Don't worry about it. We weren't that close, but it's stuff like this that made me want to become a bounty hunter. The police over in Junktown had a file on the guy, and were looking for him, but because he left the town he wasn't their problem anymore.

'New California is a big place with too few people living in it, and too shoddy a communications network to ensure a fast flow of vital information between settlements. All a guy has to do to escape punishment for his crimes in a town is walk beyond whatever the people consider to be the city limits. You might get one or two cops or deputies with a strong sense of justice chasing after them but they won't stay on the trail forever. And, because most news is carried by couriers, the next town he goes to won't have any idea about who this guy is.'

'So they won't be expecting anything,' Gaz said.

'Bingo,' John said. 'But, each day we make new strides in communicating with others. Some companies out there are working to string up wires between towns, for a price, so we can send telegrams like the days of old, while others run radio stations to keep even the most distant of settlements appraised of recent events. It's amazing how far we've come since the bombs.'

'It's depressing to see how far we've fallen, too,' Gaz said, staring pointedly at an old Highwayman sitting on the side of the road that the wind had scoured clear of all colour.

The elder of the two just shrugged and walked on.

True, humanity had gone from being able to cross whole continents in just a few hours in jet planes to covering no more than twenty miles in a single day by foot, but they were reminders of what humanity could one day regain. In the two centuries since the Great War, people had gone from scavenging for scraps of food in the ruined cities to creating vast farms of crops that could feed everyone. Between the Followers of the Apocalypse, the Office of Science and Industry, and defectors from both the Brotherhood and the Enclave, the people of New California were slowly rebuilding their technology and, with it, their quality of life.

Someday, life in the wastes wouldn't be one of constantly struggling to survive but actually living, and living well, and while John was enough of a realist to know he wouldn't be alive to see such a world he could take some comfort in knowing he was, in his own small way, helping that vision become a reality.

* * *

Junktown was a vast improvement over the listless waystation, if only because it had a name people could actually agree upon, its ramshackle wall of junk rising up out of the desert sand to let both bounty hunters know they were approaching a bastion of civilisation after so many days and weeks of trawling through the barren wastelands. They joined scores of others travellers on the hard packed dirt trail leading up to the town's main gate, some heading into Junktown and some heading out, and John spent his time walking trying to guess their occupations.

Farmers and scavengers were easy to pick out by their carts piled high with scrap or crops, though for a challenge he focused on their clothing alone. Those who worked the land and tilled crops tended towards plain but roughly hewn items made of brahmin hide or denim with wide brimmed hats to keep the sun off their already ruddy faces, whilst the ones who scoured ruins and piles of junk wore clothes that boasted extra pockets and had holsters for small tools sewn into the fabric, and they tended to be that bit more dirty from scrounging around in the dirt.

Mercenaries were an easy spot, too, given they wore thicker armour than most or carried bigger guns than was necessary for fending off the animal threats of the wastes, ad sported wary looks as they eyeballed every person they passed for any kind of danger out of reflex. Some travelled in the company of traders, who usually wore heavy coats covered in pockets full of junk and trinkets as they led brahmin laden down with even more stuff, whilst others went by in groups or alone, off to a new job or in search of one.

Fellow bounty hunters were harder to identify, though, given anonymity was one of the most valuable tools in their arsenal. At least, it was for the good ones. It was bad for business if your target could pick you out of a crowd simply by noting your apparel, either thinking you were a mercenary who _might_ be after the price on their head or a fully fledged bounty coming to collect. As such, they tended to opt for more low key choices like John and his selection.

They looked like ninety percent of the people travelling on the roads at any one point, tanned and lean and armed to varying degrees, but looking closer a person might see slightly more advanced armour systems or a wider variety of ammunition than usual, or restless eyes that flicked left and right, up and down, almost constantly as they examined those around them for any subtle tells of a less than savoury lifestyle.

Of course, some chose to go the opposite way and make themselves look as threatening as possible by buying power armour or extremely flashy weapons like laser or plasma rifles, or even gauss rifles, presenting themselves to the world as a very expensive mercenary or extremely wealthy traveller who could afford only the best the wasteland had to offer with the intention of fooling their targets into thinking 'they can't be after me, I'm too small time to be on their radar', and capitalising on that belief to catch them unaware.

It was effective but cost prohibitive, forcing a bounty hunter to rely on weapons and armour that needed specialised and rare, which was another way of saying expensive, parts to continue functioning, which meant their profit margins were way down compared to those who used more basic firearms.

John failed to see any such bounty hunters on the road with him, though felt he saw maybe two or three more conventional freelance lawmen between joining the road leading into Junktown and actually entering the town itself, all of them heading out into the harsh wasteland desert.

They looked back at him with the same appraising stare, seeing either a comrade in arms or competition, and gave more disdainful ones towards Gaz, no doubt seeing the same thing John had of a rookie who bought into the myths and romanticism of the bounty hunters of old to style himself upon. It was a both a blessing and a curse to have such tales floating around in the heads of the people, a blessing because they would unconsciously look for people dressed in dusters first rather than what actually came for them, and a curse because more than a few idiots with delusions grandeur decided they had what it took to police the wastes and took up the duster, only to get themselves killed a few days into their first bounty.

Some actually managed to evoke the age old image and make it work, but as John had said to Gaz during their first encounter they chose their targets very carefully to avoid getting into a fight they couldn't win.

'Maybe we should get you a new weapon while we're here,' John half suggested, throwing Gaz a wry smile as they walked by a stall selling weapons of all kinds, including a selection of semi-automatic rifles and pistols.

'I'll give this a chance first before deciding anything,' Gaz said as he patted the revolver strapped to his hip.

'Okay,' John said. 'How about clothes? That duster's hardly the most clandestine of outfits, you know.'

'Maybe,' Gaz said with a shrug. 'It's kinda growing on me, though. Besides, travellers wear them as well as bounty hunters, don't they? It's a kind of mind game, innit?'

John shook his head and said, 'I had you pegged as a bounty hunter the moment I laid eyes on you. Most gangs will as well, leaving just the groups too stupid to amass any sizeable price on their heads, making it hardly worth your while.'

'The Gecko Gang didn't see me as a threat,' Gaz said. 'And they had a bounty of two grand on their heads.'

Another shake of the head from John.

'Don't buy too much into that,' he said. 'They only had that big a bounty because of how often they moved around between jobs, and how many stores they hit. Beyond that, they were just petty thugs who stole only a few hundred bucks on average, and killed one person for every three stores they hit. Nothing to suggest they were smart or planned things out beforehand, just the recipients of dumb luck.

'You'd probably have to show up in full bounty hunter regalia, handlebar moustache and everything, for them to see you as a threat.'

'Way to burst my bubble even further,' Gaz muttered, shoulders slumping in dismay as they drew closer to the building serving as Junktown's bounty hunter office.

It was an unassuming place located a few doors down from the police station and the main post office, allowing quick communication with the outside world and members of the law enforcement community, and staffed by a bored looking ghoul standing behind a waist high counter who listlessly raised his gaze to look at John and Gaz when they walked in, one eyebrow twitching up in mild surprise.

'Who's the tagalong?' the ghoul said.

'A rookie I saved from buying the farm,' John said.

'Not like you to pick up strays, bud. From what I hear, you're a real lone wanderer.'

'Not picking anything up, Carlos,' John said. 'Just showing him enough of the ropes to get him on his feet. That's it.'

'Whatever,' Carlos said. He reached beneath the counter and hauled out a thick book, flicking it open to a random page and running his finger down a column filled with scribbled lines before finding the one he wanted. 'The Gecko Gang, right? Five-hundred a head?'

'Yep,' John said. 'That's the one.'

'Wait one,' Carlos said.

He left the book and turned to a nearby safe, twirling the dial this way and that to get at the money contained within. It came from the NCR itself, specifically the judicial arm who issued the bounties based on reports from the various police departments, and paid out by contractors like Carlos. It was their job to verify the reports given to them, either by accepting some unique item as proof of death or, in rare cases, by getting verbal confirmation from a bounty hunter that the job was done. This was done only with those who had proved their worth to the law enforcement community, or on jobs where it wasn't know _exactly_ what the targets had that was unique to them to provide as proof of death.

It wasn't a perfect system and people took advantage of it all the time, claiming a large bounty and collecting the money even if their targets were still very much alive and causing mayhem elsewhere in the wastelands. By the time their deception came to light, they could be long gone with a new identity and a huge wad of cash to sustain themselves.

But, with such poor communications, a better system was still a ways off that could keep bounty hunters truthful.

Carlos returned with a thick envelope full of money and began counting out two-thousand dollars, arranged into four stacks of five-hundred each, that he tossed with almost reckless abandon onto the counter before John.

'One, two, three and four,' the ghoul intoned. 'That's your lot, Johnny Boy. You wanna take a look at what else I've got on offer? Some real scum floating about the wastes these days.'

'In a little while,' John said as he scooped up the money, handing one pile to Gaz who stared blankly at the wad of cash in his hand.

'What?' John said to him.

'I don't...' Gaz began. 'You killed them, not me.'

'I killed three of them,' John said. 'You killed one. Therefore, you get one quarter of the bounty. Simple, no?'

'Wait, wait, wait,' Carlos said from behind his counter. 'You're telling me this guy, this wet behind the ears kid, helped you take down the Gecko Gang? Don't tell me you're going soft on me, man.'

'No,' John said as Carlos began to chuckle. 'No, we just happened to pick the same time and place to ambush them. He shot first and took one down, but his gun was too much to handle so he missed the rest of them.

'If I hadn't been there, he'd be rotting in the wastes by now.'

Gaz hung his head sheepishly in despondency and glumness as Carlos continued to laugh, and at John relating his disastrous first attempt at taking down a bounty once more and to someone other than himself. He balled the money up and shoved it into a pocket, making vague motions of heading outside ahead of actually doing that to leave John and Carlos in the stuffy shack.

'So, what, you took pity on him?' Carlos said when the door had swung shut.

'I saw potential,' John said. 'And it couldn't hurt to have another righter of wrongs out there in the wastelands besides myself, could it? Besides, he's gutsy enough to take on four guys who he knows aren't strangers to violence as his first job.

'He might be a rookie, but he's got more balls than you.'

* * *

John slipped out of the office and scanned the crowds for Gaz, catching a glimpse of his skinny frame walking down a side street and hurried after him to clap a hand on his shoulder.

'What's up?' he asked, noting the dour face adorning the young man's face.

'You know,' Gaz shot back, shrugging John's hand off. 'Making fun of me back there.'

'I wasn't,' John said, almost apologetically.

'You were,' Gaz said. 'Telling that zombie about how I messed up and making him laugh.'

'Ah,' John said. 'Yeah, don't buy too much into that. Carlos is an asshole, believe me, and a devout follower of the adage that comedy is tragedy happening to someone else. I could have told him a dozen different stories about people fucking up in a dozen different ways and he'd have still laughed his ass off.

'That, and he's a failed bounty hunter.'

Gaz stopped short at that and turned to look at John, saying, 'Really?'

'Really,' John said. 'He's never been able to pull in any major cases, or even moderates ones, just stuff like people who skipped the rent or got somebody's daughter pregnant without assuming their parental duties afterwards. Trust me, in the world of bounty hunters, he's the one people make fun of so he takes every opportunity to look down on people he thinks he's better than, so don't take it to heart.

'I've known him for years and I already like you more. Besides, I've got just the thing to raise your spirits.'

'What?' Gaz said.

'In due time,' John said, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially. 'First, we need to tend to that wound in your arm. My skills are great and all, but they're more a stopgap until trained professionals can take a look.'

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'But it had better be some great present to make me feel good after the past few days.'

'I guess we'll see.'


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Though the doctors of Junktown had something of a bad reputation, stemming from the questionable practices of one Doctor Morbid way back in the 2160s, they were skilled enough to improve upon the rudimentary work done by John to fix Gaz's arm with minimal scarring, even if the younger of the two had been the one to dip into his own funds for the treatment. John's charity only went so far but he was kind enough at least to pay for the following meal where he unveiled his gift to Gaz.

'An envelope?' Gaz said as he eyed the present, made from crude and stiff paper. 'That's supposed to make up for Carlos?'

'What's inside will,' John said.

Gaz shot him a wary look as he pried open the flap and dumped the envelope's contents onto the table. It was a sheaf of papers covered in masses of paragraphs and sketches that Gaz barely looked at before returning his gaze to John, saying, 'What is this, some racy novel?'

'In a... twisted sort of sense,' John said, his face grim. 'It's a case, Gaz. One with a five grand payout upon successful completion.'

'My present's another case?' Gaz said, incredulous. 'After what just happened?'

'You wanted to know if you're cut out for being a bounty hunter,' John said. 'And this should help with that.'

'Help how? By seeing if I can fuck up twice in a row?'

'By testing your investigative skills. In this line of work, it's not all about shooting guns and downing slugs of whiskey. You need to have an equally sharp mind to find and catch some criminals. I had a look through some of the backlog Carlos had and thought this would be a suitable one for you. Not too hard, but not too easy, either. So have a look and tell me what you think.'

Gaz gave him that wary look again but did as asked, sliding the papers nearer to him and picking them up to start reading through the contents. Within the first few lines, his eyebrows shot up in alarm and he looked to John who just nodded, already familiar with the details after skimming through it earlier.

It was about a rapist who operated across the entirety of the NCR in a seemingly random pattern, sometimes attacking women as far north as Klamath before swinging down in San Francisco, to then hit the Hub and Shady Sands before moving onto one of the smaller towns littering the caravan routes. Whilst rapists were nothing new in the NCR, this particular vile specimen of humanity had a very unique MO that made it easy to track his movements.

The first thing about him was that he had a very specific target; that of women with close cropped brown hair who had some kind of connection to the NCR military, either by being a member of it, the spouse of someone on active duty, or they worked for one of the major corporations that supported its operations like the Gunrunners and the Crimson Caravan Company. Second was how he restrained them, binding them to their beds with arms outstretched and feet together so that, from above, they appeared to form a cross or, as people with a religious background or experience with the Legion might say, she was placed upon a crucifix. This led many to dub the guy the Crucifier and how he was referred to in official documents.

He then raped and beat them for three days with whatever he had to hand, leaving their bodies a mess of bloodied welts, bruises and broken bones, stopping only once his victims expired from dehydration or internal bleeding. At least, John hoped this was what he did. The fact a creature such as this existed was bad enough without considering the possibility he then further desecrated their bodies after death.

Once finished, he turned his attention to the house and stole everything of value that could be sold easily without arousing suspicion, small trinkets and the like, and pocketed every last dollar he could find. According to one account, the Crucifier made off with several thousand dollars worth of baubles alone without considering the actual money he'd stolen. It was more than enough to pay off the right people to aid in his escape or forge a new identity for himself, so finding him would be very difficult indeed.

'Whoa,' Gaz whispered hoarsely when he finished reading the document. 'Just... whoa.'

He put the file down and pushed it away from him, like it was too noxious to even be near him, and his face was the same deathly pale from when he'd been shot.

'Yeah,' John said. 'Whoa.'

'Pe-People like that exist?'

'Yeah, which is why people like us exist.'

'Okay,' Gaz said, nodding slowly. 'Okay.'

'So,' John said. 'What do you think?'

'I think that guy is fucked up,' Gaz said, pointing at the file. 'Like seriously fucked up.'

'I meant about the case,' John said. 'Are you going to take it on or not?'

'I feel kinda obliged to,' Gaz said. 'But I don't think I've got the chops to actually see it through. I've never gone after serial rapists and murders before. I barely even made it through my first bounty!'

'So you keep reminding me,' John said evenly. 'But for the moment, ignore that. I want you to build a profile of the guy based on what he's done, and how, and tell me how it'd affect your tracking of the guy.'

Rather than make him pick up the file again, as John had hoped, Gaz just gave him a blank stare back like he'd failed to understand to request, prompting the elder of the two to press further.

'Okay,' John said. 'Okay, I wasn't going to offer much help on this one but I guess I can give you one for free. Take out the headshots of the women for me, Gaz, and place them side by side in front of you.'

'Okay,' Gaz said, taking a second to lumber into action and sort through the folder, plucking out the sketches of what the women had looked like before their encounter with the Crucifier and laying them next to one another before him. 'Now what?'

'Look at the pictures and tell me what you see,' John said. 'First thing that pops into your head.'

Gaz nodded and cast his eyes downward to the pictures, flicking from one to the next as he contrasted and compared them all and got the gears going round in his head. This lasted for several long seconds before he looked up again and said, 'They're all kinda similar looking.'

'Yeah,' John said. 'Which means...?'

'The guy has a type,' Gaz said slowly, the gears continuing to grind. 'A type he likes to rape and leave to die.'

'So...?'

'So,' Gaz said. 'Someone who looked like these women did something to him in the past, something that hurt him, and now he's out for... revenge? In his mind at least?'

'Finally,' John whispered. This was like pulling teeth. In a louder voice, he said, 'Yes. Now, do you know what you just did?'

'Kinda?' Gaz said. 'I looked at some of the evidence and worked backwards, I guess.'

'You made an inference based on abductive reasoning,' John said. 'The most likely answer according to the information present. Now, do you think you can do the same on the folder as a whole? Build me a profile on the guy's background and why he might be doing this?'

'But I already worked that out,' Gaz said. 'Some kind of revenge.'

'You don't know what kind of revenge,' John said. 'The answer's plain for all to see in there. You just need to look hard enough.'

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'You think this is doable for me so it can't be too hard to figure out. Do I get any extra help or...?'

'Only if you're really struggling,' John said. 'But I get five percent of the payout every time I have to help you.'

Gaz just nodded sagely and went back to the file, eyes darting all over the place as he tried to take in as much information as possible and draw whatever conclusions were needed from it. The original file had actually included them but John was holding onto them for the moment, wanting to see just how sharp Gaz's mind actually was and how much information he needed to draw upon to make a reasonable assumption as to just who the Crucifier was. He took long enough that John was able to drain his cup of coffee and start on a second one before he finally began speaking.

'I, uh, I think I have something of an idea about who this guy is,' Gaz said.

'Okay,' John said. 'Go for it.'

'Right,' Gaz said, nodding. 'So, we know he has a thing for women with short brown hair, but they also have to have some connection to the NCR Army or the organisations that support it, so I think the guy has something against the army itself.'

One for one.

'And that the reason he fixates on these girls is because they look like General Moore, so he either hates her or she's just a figurehead, or something, and raping and beating these women is his way of showing he's more powerful than the army.'

Two for two.

'And how he restrains them is kinda like a crucifix, so he's probably former Legion rather than a guy who reads the bible a lot, which would tie into why he does what he does because they see women as second class citizens at best and they always treated them badly.'

Three for three.

'But,' Gaz said, piquing John's interest.

'But?' the elder bounty hunter said.

'But,' Gaz continued. 'I don't think it's actually an old legionnaire doing this.'

'Why?' John asked.

'I just...' Gaz said before trailing off. His brows furrowed together in thought as he tried to think of a way to put his feelings into words, the gears in his head grinding away. 'This seems a bit too out of character for a Legion member to do, you know? The lower ranked guys wouldn't have the cranial capacity to put something together like this without slipping up before now, and the higher ranked ones wouldn't just rape people as a means of getting back at the NCR. They'd be worming their way into vital positions of power where they can do some real damage.

'And there's no signs of graffiti claiming responsibility. When the Legion did something behind enemy lines, they wanted people to know it was them. Like asking that courier to tell people they'd sacked Nipton, or-or leaving holodisks for the NCR to find telling them they'd wiped out the Rangers and were coming for them.

'If this really was a Legion agent, they'd leave some clue behind to let people know they were still around.'

John smiled. Four for four.

'So...?' he said.

'So,' Gaz said. 'This isn't a Legion guy, but a guy who _wants_ us to think Legion so we'll start looking in the wrong places. That means he's smart enough to know how investigators will think, but not smart enough to think out every little detail. And he's cocky, too, spending three days in the same location whilst he rapes and beats his victims. They'll be screaming and shouting and crying and making all sorts of noises. It just takes one nosy neighbour to ruin everything.'

Five for five.

'There's nothing majorly distinctive about him because nobody remembers seeing anything unusual in the days leading up to his attacks, and he's very patient because it'd take time to find a woman who fits his specific criteria. Or, he's got a job somewhere that gives him access to the records of people in the army, the Gunrunners and the Crimson Caravan.'

Six for six.

'A clerk, maybe? No, they're usually stuck in one place and people would notice if they were absent for more than two days, and neither would they have access to every record they'd need. So what job might they have that would let them know just who to target?'

John was duly impressed with how far Gaz had gotten. Everything he'd said so far lined up with the conclusions drawn up by the police, including the parts about the Crucifier not being a Legion agent, but someone trying to evoke their image. Everything he did was simply window dressing to cover up the fact he was nothing but a sadistic freak who felt the need to dominate women and leave them to die cruel and merciless deaths, and felt the need to show the police and bounty hunters he was smarter than them.

The only thing still stumping the police was how the Crucifier got his information on who to target and how he did it without attracting unwanted attention, but John had a pretty good feeling he knew how the Crucifier was doing it. He hoped Gaz could figure it out. After all, he hadn't made a wrong assumption yet.

'He's able to move around freely so he doesn't have a steady job,' Gaz continued. 'Or if he does, it's one that involves a lot of walking because he's all over the map. A caravan guard, maybe, with the Crimson Caravan Company, but even then he'd have a work schedule to keep to so he couldn't afford to be away for too long without raising suspicions. A merc? No, nobody reported seeing heavily armed guys hanging around the neighbourhood scoping the place out. A trader? That might explain why he takes all the money and the valuables, so he has stock to sell.

'Oh, no, not a trader. He'd have guards and partners who'd become suspicious about his absences, and where he gets all the stuff he does, and if they read the paper they might start putting two and two together.'

Gaz fell silent and stared off into the middle distance, one hand on the papers and the other wrapped around a lukewarm cup of coffee that he occasionally drank from. John felt he could actually hear the giant cogs smashing together inside his head as he thought, working through the possibilities of occupations the guy might have that would allow him access to everything he needed without blowing his cover and eliminating them one by one until only a few remained.

Then, all at once, something flashed in Gaz's eyes as he hit upon an idea and looked at John.

'Dates,' he said. 'I need dates for all the attacks, and a map. And some other crime data.'

'Police station,' John said, jerking his head towards the local law enforcement building. 'Take the file with you to show them.'

'Be right back,' Gaz said, bolting from the table at breakneck speeds.

* * *

He was back inside of fifteen minutes, looking a sight with his arms full of folders and a map of the NCR, dumping all of it onto the table and arranging it into a disorganised pile that made sense only to him and got to work, scribbling down the estimated dates of the attacks over the towns and cities they'd taken place in before flipping open a new file that John didn't get a good look at, flicking between it and the map as he started writing down yet more dates over the key points of interest.

By the time he was done, the map was almost covered by his scruffy penmanship and he leant back into his chair, seemingly exhausted from the work he'd done and immensely proud of what he'd accomplished.

'The Crucifier is a courier,' Gaz said proudly. 'He's a courier and that's how he's doing his recon.'

John fought to suppress a smile. 'How can you be so sure?'

'It's the only thing that makes sense,' Gaz said. 'A lot of the mail being sent between towns is from the major corporations, like the Crimson Caravan Company and the Gunrunners, and they use couriers to carry a whole lot of it. When you look at the files, you see that most of the victims of the Crucifier aren't actually serving in the army, but are in one of the support organisations or are partners of people on active duty.

' _Exactly_ the kind of people who'd get letters and notes and parcels from others, and those are the very things couriers carry. He rocks up to a house, sees who answers the door and strikes up a conversation about how things are, learns what he needs to, and then he comes back at a later time to carry out his sick deeds.

'That's why he keeps moving around a lot. He's a _courier_ , John. A fucking courier.'

'And all these?' John asked, looking at the other dates that weren't related to the Crucifier.

'They're Crucifier attacks from when he didn't make it look like a Legion attack,' Gaz said. 'They were all women who were raped, but because they don't look like General Moore he didn't make it look like it was revenge for the Legion. I think these are the exception, not the rule.'

He gestured to the Crucifier case notes and said, 'They're to throw us off what's really happening.'

'Are you really sure?' John said.

'Yeah, yeah,' Gaz said as he pulled out the map and began pointing at the various dates as he spoke. 'See, the Crucifier was here in New Reno in April, raping and killing a Moore lookalike, and then nothing for three months until he struck again in the Hub, followed by another month of silence before he resurfaced here, in Junktown, and so on and so on. Now, the randomness of it all confused me for a little while because people aren't capable of actually being that random. We all have some bias, right? Towards some form of sequence? So I started to think.

'What if the Legion themed attacks were disguising something other than who the guy was? What if they were actually disguising a state wide rape spree? That's why I needed the extra records, to make sure this actually was true, and guess what? I was right.

'So, in the three months between New Reno and the Hub, there was a slight increase in the number of rapes of single young women that, in some way, incorporated elements from the Moore attacks. The week after New Reno, a woman reported being attacked in her home by a guy who tied her to the bed. Granted, she was spread eagle rather than a cross but the timing was a little coincidental for my liking.'

He carried on listing the elements from these seemingly unconnected rapes that were the same in the Crucifier's MO, like tying them to the bed and raping them or stealing all their money and valuables or just bludgeoning them to death between sessions, all the while making note of the dates they occurred. By and large, the timings matched up and accounted for the months the Crucifier was absent but it wasn't solid proof he was the one responsible. New California was home to more than a few unsavoury characters, any number of whom could have committed the attacks Gaz had singled out.

But, it sounded plausible and Gaz had worked it out all by himself, and John finally allowed himself to smile.

'Seven for seven,' he said. 'Not bad, Gaz. Not bad.'

'Wait, what?' Gaz said. 'Seven for seven?'

'Yeah,' John said. 'This is a test, remember? The file I got from Carlos had all these conclusions and assumptions made by the investigators but I took them all out. I wanted to see if you could think like them and, surprisingly, you can. They don't think he's Legion, either. But, they don't know how he's getting all the information without getting himself noticed. I'm duly impressed you managed to make the connection.

'I'm uh, also astounded you managed to make this connection as well. I figured the guy was just patient and methodical, and that the long absences between his attacks was him waiting for the perfect candidate. It never occurred to me he was dressing up some of them to throw the police off their game. Good job, Gaz. I mean it.'

He gestured to the map and the extra folders Gaz had brought from the police station even as the younger man stared at him with a dumbstruck expression, mouth hanging open to give him more than a passing resemblance to a fish, until he blinked and came back to reality with a massive grin on his face at being praised so highly.

'I-I-I- Uh, you- Um, me...?' he stammered out like a fool, seemingly unable to form any kind of coherent sentence before snapping back and saying, 'Thanks, John. That means a lot.'

'You're welcome,' John said with a smile. 'Now, getting back to the case. Based on what you know, can you tell me where this bastard is likely to be next?'

'Oh, uh, yeah,' Gaz said. 'Yeah, yeah. So, the last Crucifier attack was in Klamath about two months ago and there's been an increase in other attacks on the routes heading south-southeast, so...'

He trailed off and started muttering to himself, fingers tracing down the routes and dates as he tried to work out where the Crucifier was likely going next based on the data he had until he stopped on a little village south of the Broken Hills ghost town, the location of the latest attack which was, according to the date, just over two weeks ago.

'He was here last,' Gaz said. 'And heading south, so he should wind up here at some point.'

His finger came to a stop on Shady Sands, the NCR's capital, and he looked up at John as if to say is this right? The elder of the two gave a noncommittal shrug and said, 'I don't know. This is your show, Gaz. I'm just an observer here, along for the ride. If you want to go there, go there. If you don't, don't.'

Gaz nodded slowly and looked back down at the map, eying distances and working out travelling times in his head.

'We'll either get there before him, or just after,' he said. 'But not so much that we'll be waiting ages or have to hurry to catch up with him.'

'If you're sure,' John said.

'I'm sure,' Gaz said. 'Let's catch us a monster.'


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

They made it to Shady Sands quickly enough, about a day before the Crucifier was supposed to actually turn up and start in on his horrific pastime, and Gaz was quicker still to make a beeline for the nearest post office to begin his investigation into just who the rapist was. He hadn't overly talked to John on how he should go about it given that every question he asked would cost him 250 dollars a pop, spending much of the trip with his brow furrowed in deep thought and his mouth making only the occasional twitch as he murmured to himself.

The course of action was fairly obvious for even the greenest bounty hunter; if your prey was a courier but you didn't know who you were actually after, stop by the nearest post office and ask around, though calling it a post office was something of an exaggeration. The NCR, unlike pre-war America, had no federally funded mail service that happily transported letters and packages from one end of the country to the other, only an administrative arm that oversaw the operations of numerous independent outfits and made sure they didn't engage in too shady a business practice in an attempt to put others out of work.

Beyond that, the myriad of offices spread across the wastes also served as holding areas for packages people wanted delivered. They would come in and give their letter or parcel to the clerk, who would then measure it to determine what it would cost, and then the customer would choose which company they wanted based on their own personal preference, either affordability or reliability, and then they would pay. From there, the clerk's only job was to place the package in the chosen company's box and deposit the payment into the corresponding safe, minus a small administrative surcharge.

At least, it had been until recently when the government began paying much closer attention to the couriers who roamed the wastes, spurred into action by the devious machinations of some previously unknown courier working for the Mojave Express. John still remembered the day he had learned of the Legion's victory in the Mojave and his subsequent recall to active duty, all because of some postal worker called Clarissa Jones who had sided with slavers and rapists over her own country.

Even today, years after the NCR's victory in New Vegas, people were still trying to figure out just _why_ she had pledged her alliance to the slave army, especially given their backwards attitude to women and view of what their place in society should be. Maybe it was the promise of wealth beyond imagining, or a position of power within the Legion, or maybe Caesar had simply made her view the NCR in a different light, playing up its follies rather than its achievements, and what it might someday achieve.

All John knew about Clarissa was that a team of Rangers had made it their sole mission to track her, Caesar and the Legate Lanius, and kill them all, and had accomplished this mission despite losses to their unit. He had avoided the worst of the fighting thanks to his role as an instructor for new arrivals and helping secure their supply lines against Legion surprises, but even he had let out a whoop of triumph once news reached their unit.

Perhaps the sole good thing she had done was to make it so that all couriers operating within the NCR were now required to register themselves with the NCR's post service if they wished to continue working, and this included filling out a comprehensive list of every place they'd travelled through as part of their work from both that point forward and from as far back as they could remember. Some had objected to the extra layer of bureaucracy but others had wisely kept their mouths shut, knowing the NCR had every justification to do so after what Clarissa had done, plus the means of enforcing it via their army and police force.

What that meant was that Gaz could whittle down their suspect list from many hundreds to perhaps a few dozen, if not a handful, simply by matching the dates of the attacks with the names of the couriers who happened to be in the area around the same time.

Assuming they could get the information.

To keep the couriers placated, if only a little, the government had promised them their information would only be given out to those with the proper clearance or a warrant. John himself had never actually gone after such details before but he had heard some of his fellow bounty hunters bemoaning the system once or twice, and the steps that had taken to get it. Mostly it amounted to a kind word and a few hundred dollars, a method John had used before in different situations, and he was curious to see if Gaz would work it out for himself.

The younger of the two strode up to the post office with some trepidation, pulling the door open gently enough that it didn't come off as too aggressive or too slowly, like he was more than a little nervous, and stepped into the plainly decorated office like he had done this countless times, John following in quick succession but he lingered by the door, watching.

At the counter was a lined man of about fifty, his head topped by an unruly mane of grey hair that looked as though it had never once met a brush, and he looked up with mild disinterest from a newspaper he was reading at the newcomers, glancing once at John before fixing his stare on Gaz.

'Yes?' he said. 'Do you have a package to drop off, or to pick up?'

'Neither,' Gaz said. 'I'm looking for some information.'

'Pricing's on that wall, by your friend,' the clerk said, nodding lethargically at a poster next to John that had all sorts of graphs and diagrams that related to how much it would cost to ship something. 'Otherwise the town hall has what you need.'

'I need information about a courier,' Gaz said. 'We- I'm looking for him.'

The clerk shook his head. 'Privileged information, I'm afraid. Unless you're a cop, which you don't look, or have a warrant, which you would have shown me by now, I can't let you have a look. It's the law.'

Gaz paused ever so slightly and glanced back at John but the elder bounty hunter made a sweeping gesture with one hand, as though to say this was all Gaz's show.

He turned back to the clerk and said, 'Please. It's very important.'

'Oh, I'm sure,' the clerk said. 'But this information is to be given out only to members of law enforcement, or those with the appropriate paperwork. It was part of the agreement when they made with the companies and the couriers when they made it a requirement of the trade. So unless you're here for a package...'

He let that hang in the air, his eyes drifting lazily to the door with the subtle indication Gaz should leave, and then returned to the paper that had been keeping his attention previously. The headline was nothing majorly huge, just something about an increase in military readiness despite their being no apparent threat on the horizon, and Gaz looked down at it as well. John watched him carefully as he did, noting the slight furrowing of the brow that signalled his brain was smashing those great gears together, and so he waited.

It was hard to get information out of a bureaucrat in most circumstances, doubly so if they liked their job or posting like this clerk seemed to. He didn't appear all that bored with the posting so much as content and comfortable, like this was something he was more than happy to do until his heart stopped beating, and there was very little a person could offer to make him do anything that would risk him losing said job. Even the kind word and sum of money approach might fall short here.

Worse, people who protected valuable information were often targeted specifically for such things, being told all manner of sob stories and tales of woe from people claiming to be searching for lost relatives or persons of interest, and usually developed such a cynical streak that it would require actual physical proof for them to part with their information to anyone but an authorised government official, but there was always some chink in their armour to exploit.

Looking at the clerk, John spied a muted golden band on his ring finger, typically indicative of a married man, and hanging on the far wall behind him was a rare photograph taken using a functioning camera. In it was the clerk himself standing behind two children, a boy and a girl, who looked just young enough that they might well be his grandkids, and he must have loved them very much to pay for such an expensive service given the scarcity of both film and cameras in this part of the wasteland.

Gaz glanced at it ever so briefly, eyes widening slightly, and he flickered to the newspaper the clerk was reading. John looked as well, half expecting to see an article on the Crucifier himself, but it was just some fluff piece about a mobilisation of several army units despite there being little to no worthwhile threats facing the NCR at the moment. Even so, it made something click in Gaz's head.

'You've heard about the Crucifier,' he said. 'Right?'

'Sure,' the clerk said. 'Always makes the headlines when he leaves his mark. Terrible thing what he does to those women, attacking them like that just because they support the NCR. Haven't the police caught him yet?'

'No,' Gaz said. 'But I'm hoping to.'

The clerk looked Gaz up and down, taking in the duster and the revolver and the repeater, and gave him a disbelieving glance as though to say, 'Really?'

'What makes you think you know where he is?' the clerk said instead. 'Nobody can predict his pattern, not even the Rangers, and I think they have a bit more experience in that regard than you.'

'Sometimes you need fresh eyes to see new things,' Gaz said. 'I have a theory on who the Crucifier is and how he's picking his targets, but I need a little extra information to test it.'

'So why are you after cour-'

The clerk stopped himself when he realised what Gaz's theory was, eyes widening in surprise for a moment, but reverted back to normal as he shook his head.

'Still can't give out that info,' the clerk said. 'Unless you've got undeniable proof the Crucifier is a courier, or you get a warrant, I'm legally required to withhold any and all information pertaining to a courier.'

 _Ah, the wonders of bureaucracy_ , John thought to himself as Gaz clenched his hands for the briefest of moments, letting them fall limp as cooler heads prevailed.

'I have a list of all the times and locations a Crucifier attack took place,' he said, reaching for the list he had compiled back in the diner just a few days ago. 'Plus several others that I think are his work as well, but were overlooked by the police.'

He placed the list on the counter and pushed it over to the clerk who took hold of the list and opened it up, scanning the numerous entries with more than a little shock. There were, after all, over a hundred entries with just a small handful highlighted as definite Crucifier attacks.

'You think all of these are Crucifier attacks?' he said.

'Yes,' Gaz said before explaining his theory about the Legion-themed attacks being nothing but elaborately constructed camouflage to throw the police off his real crime spree. 'And I think he uses his guise as a courier to select his victims and carry out his recon, but it's only a theory at this point which can't be proven without your data.'

'Take it to the police, then,' the clerk said. 'I think they're ready to believe anything at this point if it helps catch the guy.'

'Like they'd listen to me,' Gaz said with a dismissive wave. 'You barely believe me now, so what makes you think they will?'

The clerk conceded that one with a half shrug but shook his head again, saying, 'I still can't let you access these files without proper clearance.'

'Please,' Gaz said. 'This guy has hurt a lot of people.'

He got the same shrug and shake of the head from before that told him no, the clerk's position was firm, so Gaz reached into another pocket and pulled out the wad of cash John had given him back in Junktown, minus hospital bills and paying for supplies, and peeled off two one-hundred dollar bills which he placed next to the list.

The clerk eyed them up warily and said, 'Bribery won't get those files, either.'

'So don't take it for you, then,' Gaz said. 'Take it for your grandkids to buy a gun with, because if we can't stop the Crucifier here then there's no telling where he might strike next. Could be their house is the next one he visits.'

The clerk said nothing at that. He just fiddled with the ring on his finger and glanced back over his shoulder at the framed photo of his grandchildren with a blank expression on his face before turning back to Gaz, flicking between the money and the list and his nearby terminal that had access to the records the bounty hunter was after. It was a compelling argument being laid out before him, one that was saying his family might well be affected by the actions of the Crucifier, maybe compelling enough for him to bend the rules this one time.

'I'll check the times and locations,' the clerk finally said. 'But just me. I'm still not allowed to let you look at these files. Okay?'

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'I just want to know if a name pops up more than usual.'

'There's bound to be,' the clerk said as he studied the list. 'These are pretty popular routes to be walking. More than a few people are going to pop up over and over again.'

'I'm just looking for the one that appears almost a hundred times,' Gaz said.

'Okay,' the clerk said before gesturing at John. 'Go wait with your friend.'

Gaz nodded and moved to stand beside John, leaning against the wall like him as the clerk began in on the list by typing an unseen command into his computer. John wondered if there was some manner of cross referencing system in place to speed the search up, or if this would be a painstakingly long process whereby the clerk had to write down any names that seemed to show up in the lists more often than others.

'How am I doing?' Gaz asked in a low voice.

'He's checking, ain't he?' John said. 'It's a start.'

'Yeah, but will he tell me the name?' Gaz said. 'Assuming there _is_ a name.'

'There'll be a name,' John said. 'With the scrutiny the government is putting on couriers nowadays? There'll be a name.'

'Assuming I'm right that the Crucifier is a courier,' Gaz muttered, closing his eyes. 'He could be just some wasteland wanderer for all I know, living off the money and trinkets he steals and I'm jumping to conclusions.'

John could only shrug at that. It was a plausible scenario but it didn't account for how the Crucifier managed to get the information on his targets in so short a time. It would probably take a cautious person two or three days to acquire all the information they wanted or needed on a target, which meant three days of staying in a single location near a specific person as they went about their daily lives. People would notice and people would talk, and then the police would listen and develop some kind of sketch based on eye witness testimonies.

Drifters in the wasteland typically stayed in one place for less than a day, just long enough to stock up on provisions and get wounds seen to before moving on, so anybody who lingered for more than that would stick out, especially to innkeepers and shop owners who tended to serve as nexus points in a town's gossip network.

He spent the next thirty or so minutes trying to imagine what the Crucifier actually looked like, seeing him as some hideous beast ostracised from regular society who turned to raping and murdering people prettier than him as petty revenge, but stopped quickly enough and imagined him as a more conventional fellow who was neither too ugly or too pretty, riding that middle boundary and using his anonymity to evade detection and suspicion, then snapped back to reality when the clerk finished his search.

'I found a name,' he said.

'One that matched all the spots?' Gaz asked as he walked over, John staying where he was.

'Just about,' the clerk said. 'Ninety-seven for one-oh-one, and you can probably write those four off as poor record keeping or something.'

'Do you believe me now?' Gaz said.

'I'm swinging round to the idea,' the clerk said, eyes falling to the monochrome display of his computer. 'I shouldn't be telling you this.'

'But you want to,' Gaz said. 'Because of your grandkids. Because you want them to be safe.'

'This is private information,' the clerk said. 'And there's no actual proof that this is your guy. All you've got is a theory and no actual evidence, beyond that list of yours.'

'Theories exist to be tested,' Gaz said. 'Either this guy is the Crucifier, or he isn't. We'll know for certain if we catch him in the act.'

The clerk said nothing to that but gave a resigned sigh and beckoned Gaz to join him behind the desk to look at the computer, the young bounty hunter moving quickly to do so with John following shortly after, all three of them crowding around the battered machine to stare at the open document that held all the information couriers were required to provide to the government if they wished to continue their jobs in the mail delivery sector. Most of the personal details would be fake, John assumed.

Companies were required to carry out some kind of background check on new employees according to NCR guidelines but this seldom happened. Unless a person gave references during their interview, and said references were close by, the most a person had to do to get the job was meet whatever criteria a company said was needed for a position with them, usually a demonstration of the skills necessary to be a courier, to say nothing of the independent ones who simply had to provide their details to the post office.

With a skilled enough forger and maybe a large enough bribe, anyone could become a courier with whatever kind of past they wished to have, so John ignored almost all of the text and focused instead on the file photo taken during registration. It showed, as his earlier musings had predicted, a man of average features who could be lost at once in even the smallest of crowds in the blink of an eye and be all but impossible to describe to a sketch artist without making him look like several hundred other men.

'Jules Swallow,' Gaz read aloud. 'He's our guy?'

'That's up to you,' John said. 'This is your rodeo after all.'

Gaz nodded absently as he stared at the images of Swallow, committing it to memory, and asked, 'Is he due into Shady Sands in the next few days?'

'I can check,' the clerk said. 'Based on his route over the past few weeks, I'd say so.'

'But you'll check,' Gaz said.

The clerk nodded and opened a new page, a mass of abbreviated town names and dates, some stretching three years back which was long before the Crucifier attacks had started up, and ran his finger down the screen along the very last column before tapping the final entry.

'Yeah, he's supposed to be coming in tomorrow with six packages,' the clerk said. 'Two for drop off here and four for hand delivery.'

'And beyond that?' Gaz asked.

'Doesn't say,' the clerk said.

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'We'll need a list of the four people he's going to visit, plus their addresses.'

'I can't give that out,' the clerk began to say, a reflex most likely, only to catch himself and admit some kind of defeat by shrugging. Without the addresses, there was no way Gaz or John would know where to go in their quest to track down and hopefully stop the Crucifier. He reached for a pad of paper and a well worn pencil, jotting down the details with a scruffy penmanship of verged on being illegible.

'I'd better not get into trouble because of this,' he said, handing Gaz the note.

'You won't,' Gaz said. 'You might even get lauded as a hero for helping us out.'

'Yeah,' the clerk said, nodding, only to shake his head and say, 'No. Nobody can know I gave this out without authorisation. I might lose my job.'

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'We won't mention you.'

'Okay,' the clerk said. 'Thanks.'

Gaz pocketed the two lists, both his own and the one given to him by the clerk, but left the money on the counter where it had sat untouched since he'd placed it there. The clerk glanced at it, surprised, but made no motion to reach for it, just as Gaz equally made no move to put it back in his pocket. They remained locked in this apparent stalemate for a long minute, each making slight gestures for the other to take it back, until John grew too irritated with everything and settled the matter by grabbing hold of one of the bills and shoving it into one of Gaz's pockets with one hand whilst the other took hold of the scruff of his neck and used this new handhold to push him towards the door.

Taking this as his cue to resume forward motion under his own power, Gaz reached for the door and yanked it open to deposit both bounty hunters back into the hustle and bustle of Shady Sands, the NCR's capital, and potentially the home of an unsuspecting women who might be soon become yet another victim of the Crucifier's vile crime spree. Armed with the knowledge provided to them by the clerk, Gaz strode out into the busy street towards the first of the four addresses to perform some reconnaissance of his own, John following close behind.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

It didn't take long to narrow down the list of possible suspects down from four to one.

Two of the potential victims were men so they got crossed off the list immediately, and while the third name belonged to a woman she lived in such a vibrant and active neighbourhood that not only would the people living nearby take note of the screams and sounds of a struggle, they'd also quickly notice the woman's absence after maybe a day and come investigate, but the fourth woman? She ticked every box necessary to be a Crucifier victim.

Not only did she have brown hair like General Moore and a connection to the army, being the wife of an officer, but she lived in a sparsely populated area of town that was seldom patrolled by the police department or anyone else really, and her closest neighbours looked to be professional drunkards who cast a wary eye over everyone who walked by their rundown house. If Jules Swallow really was their guy, he would be coming back at a later time to turn her into yet another piece of camouflage in his sick spree across New California.

Gaz performed admirably in his effort to figure out who on the list was likely to be the victim, posing as a courier who had gotten the wrong shipping address for some packages when he knocked on the door and asking innocuous questions whilst John looked on from a respectable distance. He still had yet to ask the senior bounty hunter a single question pertaining to the case or how to carry it out, and thus was set to get his full five-thousand dollar reward for handing in the Crucifier, which was duly impressing to John as he was certain Gaz would have asked at least one question before now.

They were both sitting on the stoop of a rundown general store half a block down from Amelia Clarke's house, a six pack of Nuka Cola resting between them, looking for all intents and purposes as a pair of weary travellers enjoying a brief respite after trekking many hundreds of miles with a well earned drink, which was more or less true. It hadn't been a short trip from Junktown to here and when they were moving, they were doing so at a rapid pace.

John leant back and popped open a bottle of Nuka Cola and drank down a mouthful of the flat and warm liquid, trying not to think about the kinds of preservatives that had gone into it to ensure drinkability two-hundred years after leaving the bottling plant. He had heard of other variants of the drink, including one that included a radioactive isotope to make it glow, but beyond billboards he had yet to actually see one.

Next to him Gaz was leaning forward and staring at the ground before him, an open but untouched bottle in his hands, a distant expression on his face.

'You feeling okay, kid?' John asked when Gaz failed to move a muscle for the best part of two minutes. 'Molerat got your tongue?'

'Just thinking,' Gaz said, moving only his lips. 'About tomorrow, and how we're going to keep watch for the guy without making it too obvious.'

'Any thoughts so far?'

'Some. Nothing I'm too confident in, though.'

'Walk me through them.'

'Why?'

'Because talking aloud can sometimes help shake things loose.'

'Does that count as giving help?' Gaz asked.

'No,' John said. 'I'm allowed to give you little hints and tips for life in general, but nothing specific about the case.'

'Okay,' Gaz said. 'So, we don't know when Swallow is going to turn up tomorrow, assuming he even does, which means we've got to keep an eye on Clarke's house pretty much all day until he does, but we can't do that without attracting attention from someone. There are no diners or anything that we can sit outside for any long period of time, and I doubt the shopkeeper of this place would want us clogging up the storefront for any length of time. He's giving us small looks even now.'

John glanced over his shoulder the at the man in question, seeing he was indeed giving the pair unhappy looks at them sitting on the wooden steps even though they'd just paid him ten bucks for six bottles of Nuka Cola they were now drinking, and turned back to Gaz.

'We could pose as drunks, I suppose,' the former tribal continued. 'But there's a chance the police will come swinging by and arrest us for public intoxication and cause a scene, maybe right as Swallow is turning up and scare him off.'

'They seem happy enough to sit around drinking all day,' John said, gesturing subtly at the couple sitting in their garden with bottles of beer and whiskey littering the ground around them.

'They're not flat out drunk, though,' Gaz said. 'And they're sitting on private property. Hell, the cops are probably on first name basis with them.'

'Maybe,' John said.

He looked up and down the street for the place he would pick as an observation point ahead of a daylong stakeout but saw nothing immediately suitable. As Gaz had pointed out, most of the places weren't the types that appreciated having somebody sitting outside them for long periods of time without causing some manner of fuss, and neither were there any good places for a person to sit and pretend to be drunk for much the same reasons. It took just one angry word from an owner for the police to come down and cause a scene.

Whilst they could probably smooth things over by explaining the situation, there was always the chance Swallow would see everything and decide it wasn't worth the effort, or the police would try and take over the sting operation and flood the area with undercover operatives that could just as easily drive the Crucifier off by making him think the neighbourhood was more populated than it actually was.

But.

This was all based on the assumption they needed to operate within the legal bounds of the law all the time when apprehending a suspect. There were those few times when committing some small crime was justified if it meant catching a bigger and far worse criminal, and when John viewed the street in that regard he saw a plethora of viable spots he and Gaz could use to keep an eye out for Jules Swallow.

The street had a lack of people on it and most of the buildings that lined it looked to be either commercial in nature or residential, and many of the houses didn't look like they often had people living in them for one reason or another. Maybe they were all caravan guards who needed a place to rest between jobs, or soldiers on leave between tours of duty, but most importantly they left their homes unoccupied for weeks and months at a time. Plenty had verandas and porches outside them, complete with space for chairs that a person with nothing to do might sit in to watch the world go by.

Gaz turned to John and studied his face intently, eventually asking, 'You've got an idea, haven't you?'

'I might,' John said. 'But you know it will cost five percent of the take, remember?'

'I remember,' Gaz said.

Then he fell quiet and started sweeping his gaze up and down the street in a vain attempt at picking out whatever it was that John had spotted but, lacking the other man's experience, could only sigh in resignation and let his shoulders droop when he drew a blank.

'Okay,' he said. 'What's the idea?'

'How are your lock picking skills?' John asked.

* * *

It ended up costing Gaz another five percent because he hadn't much experience when it came to opening a locked door without the proper key and without simply breaking it down, not that he looked like he had the physical strength to do so in one clean hit, and John had brandished his kit that contained, among other things, bobby pins bent into various shapes to fit various locks.

They went in through the back door and found themselves in a sparsely decorated kitchen that contained only the barest essentials necessary to cook a meal. There was a hob sitting atop an oven, a sink in the corner, a refrigerator that was empty and turned off, and just enough surfaces to prepare a meal on.

It was a theme repeated in the rest of the house, with the living room and bedroom having the very bare minimum needed to qualify as a living room and a bedroom, and the lack of any personal touches suggested the owner wasn't the type who put much value in ascetics. In fact it looked like it could have belonged to an officer of the NCR Army and utilised only when they weren't on active deployment, or stationed in the city with their outfit.

Whoever they were, the two bounty hunters quickly made themselves as comfortable as they dared in the house and started looking for the items necessary to complete the image they wanted to show tomorrow, that of two guys enjoying a long day of doing nothing after who knew how long out in the wastes. Comfortable chairs were a must, plus side tables or stools that could hold a bottle of beer or Nuka Cola and maybe some books they could pretend to leaf through as they waited. What they didn't have they improvised, and what they couldn't improvise they bought though with Gaz footing the bill for the most part. It was still his case after all, and John wasn't quite so generous as to dip into his own funds.

By the time dawn broke the next day they were ready, or as close to it as they could manage on so short a notice, and were quick to dump themselves into the two chairs on the porch the moment life began appearing in the streets. With a case of bottles beside them and something to prop their feet up on, the pair looked exactly like they belonged there and could stay there for the entire day, which they needed to.

Not content with the silence that had fallen over them, Gaz was the first to speak.

'Why do you think he does it?' he asked.

'The Crucifier?' John asked back, continuing when he got a nod. 'No idea. Something as depraved as a nationwide rape spree takes a special kind of fucked up to do. Maybe he got slapped around as a kid by his mother or an older sister, and this is his way at getting back at the opposite sex.'

'Kind of a cruel way to do it,' Gaz said.

'Kind of a cruel world we live in,' John said. 'I reckon that if he tried this before the bombs fell, they would have caught him almost instantly. They had all kinds of tools and tests back then to tell who had done what, and use it to put a person behind bars.'

'Too bad we don't have that here,' Gaz said sourly.

'Focus on the negatives, why don't you,' John said. 'We used to have it, and will do again. The NCR is bringing us back to civilisation one milestone at a time. Go back even seventy years and we didn't have the solid agricultural base we have today. People were a lot leaner back then.'

'I guess,' Gaz said with a shrug. 'Aren't you worried they'll turn into the governments of old and bomb us back to the Stone Age again?'

'Maybe a little, but not for a really long time. The governments of old had absolutely massive stockpiles of resources to call upon to build their weapons. What do we have? A couple hundred thousand brahmin and a land littered with junk and rusted hulks. Kinda hard to build ICBMs with that.'

'There are other ways of destroying nations,' Gaz said. 'Chemical and biological weapons are likely things to be built, right?'

'Yeah, I suppose,' John said. 'But who are they going to be using them on?'

'Other groups,' Gaz said, jerking his thumb eastward towards the land that had once belonged to Caesar, and who knew what else beyond it. 'I've heard some rumours about a Brotherhood of Steel chapter on the east coast, rallying behind some really driven new Elder. They could be a problem.'

That piqued John's interest as he hadn't heard anything of the like from his buddies and contacts in the army, the very people who usually concerned themselves with the goings on of the Brotherhood of Steel, and he said, 'Where'd you hear that?'

Gaz gave a half shrug, saying, 'Some traveller who'd been through the area about a year ago. We were swapping stories in some bar a few months ago and he mentioned how they've got this whole area around the old capital under their thumb, using it to build up their numbers and stuff, and they're following some teen called Arthur who's a real piece of work, apparently.'

'That could very well be a problem,' John said. 'Long trek from the east coast to here, though. A good couple months of travel, especially for people in power armour.'

'If they wanted to come here, I'm sure they'd find a way,' Gaz said. 'However risky.'

John nodded and hummed in agreement, casting his mind's eye east to the old capital of America and the idea of it being under the control of the Brotherhood of Steel. How big might it grow without somebody like the NCR to keep it in check? Not overly big considering the Brotherhood was very picky about who could join, preferring to replenish their ranks with their own rather than allowing 'backwards savages' like wastelanders join. If they did decide to push west and rekindle the NCR-BoS War, they would get overwhelmed by the sheer number of troops the NCR could field.

But then, the Brotherhood would have to know that given combat was their chief trade, so if they did choose to come back then that meant they had some secret ace up their sleeve that could wholly mitigate the disparity in numbers and lack of a logistical support base that would come about from moving more than 2,500 miles across a violent and harsh wasteland that was now America. The thought of that made John's blood run cold but he forced himself to focus back onto the street in his search of Jules Swallow.

So far he hadn't appeared and beyond some guy dressed in a black robe with red trimmings talking in strange tongues about a dark god, there wasn't anything of obvious note to be seen in either direction. They lapsed back into silence again beyond a smattering of idle talking points or the swapping of tales of adventure, most of which John supplied considering his more active lifestyle, and of their upbringing, which Gaz took the lead in because John had already described his childhood.

By the by, it could have been the tale of any tribal child living in post-war America of playing in and around the ruins of the old world and trying to unravel their secrets, and trying to cling to the history and culture of their ancestors who had found themselves awash in a radioactive wasteland on that fateful day back in 2077. Some managed it, retaining basic English, whilst others descended into savagery and spoke in dialects and languages that were completely divorced from reality at times.

The Inland Tribe was discovered by an NCR Army platoon during a mountain climbing exercise and taken back to civilisation, given reconditioning to help them adapt to the new world they found themselves in and then let loose upon the wasteland to ingratiate into as best they could. Gaz had chosen the path of a bounty hunter after stumbling across some old novels about the Wild West and the stoic gunslinger heroes they portrayed, donning a duster and putting himself on collision course with the Gecko Gang and John.

For the moment it looked like his second bounty was going to be as disappointing as the first as Jules Swallow steadfastly refused to show up and deliver his package but then, as the blazing Californian sun reached its zenith in the sky, he arrived.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Jules Swallow really didn't look like anything much.

He was neither too tall or too short, nor too fat or too skinny, and wearing simple travelling clothes and carrying common firearms for self-defence that almost everyone else who walked the many dusty roads filling California wore. As John had speculated earlier, he lacked any major facial features that could have pinpointed him in a line up with other suspects or on a wanted poster, not even a beard or moustache. If not for the mandatory photo required by the NCR for all couriers, there was likely no chance in hell that either bounty hunter could have spotted him at all.

John spotted him first, casually casting his gaze over the newcomer on the street as he took a long sip of his Nuka Cola, subtly gesturing with his eyebrow for Gaz to turn his head and look Swallow's way. With a slowness that came across as incredibly lethargic or tellingly nervous, Gaz swivelled his head towards their suspect and took him in like John had, eying up the man they may or may not soon be tangling with shortly.

Their suspect looked at them both too, a quick appraising stare that shifted to somebody else further down the street, the guy dressed in the black robes who was babbling on about his dark god, and then onto the drunken couple sitting in their front garden. Nothing about what he saw seemed to give pause to Swallow as he continued onwards to Amelia Clarke's home, reaching into his satchel for a parcel twice the size of his fist and wrapped in thick, brown paper.

'Stay cool,' John muttered quietly as he put his Nuka Cola down and reached for a battered paperback novel, opening it up to a random page like he was picking up from where'd left off. 'Just watch and observe him, nothing else. We don't want to spook him.'

'Sure,' Gaz whispered back, forcing both hands into his lap as he scooted himself lower into his chair, like he was getting settled in ahead of a nap. 'Cool.'

Both of them watched as Swallow headed up to Amelia's door and knocked on it three times, his bare knuckles making a muted sound on the wooden construction, and waited for the homeowner to come and answer it. Even from afar, John could see that she bore a striking resemblance to General Casandra Moore, if only in the sense that both were women with short, brown hair of similar size and stature. Beyond that, their facial features were different enough to make it all but impossible to confuse one for the other.

'I wonder what he asks them,' Gaz said from his relaxed position.

'Idle chatter,' John said. 'Small talk. Anything to put them at ease, and spill vital clues and information that makes his task easier. I guess it all really depends on how open his victims are at talking with complete strangers.'

'Yeah,' Gaz said idly.

Swallow continued to talk with Amelia for several minutes, more than what was required of a courier when delivering a parcel, at one point saying something that made her loose off a laugh and gesture for him to follow inside, though Swallow must have declined because he shook his head and made motions of heading back out into the city and patting his bag, as though indicating he had more parcels and letters to deliver. Amelia nodded at that and waved him goodbye as Swallow span on his heel and walked back onto the street with a slow and measured gait. He was unhurried and at ease.

'Why didn't he go in when she asked him to?' Gaz asked as Swallow began moving out of sight.

'Witnesses,' John said. 'Between you and me and everyone else, there's close to a dozen sets of eyes lining the street and if an investigator learns that the last person seen going into the victim's house was a courier, their first port of call will be with Swallow for questioning, maybe even a DNA sample to compare against the evidence they collected from Amelia's corpse. Even if they don't catch him here, they can flag his account so that the next time he blows into town the local police can detain him.

'So when is he going to be back?' Gaz said.

By now Swallow was gone from sight, turning a corner that led back into the livelier parts of the city and where his next delivery lay, one of the three that Gaz had ruled out, or maybe just a shop or bar where he could restock on supplies and get some rest ahead of the nefarious activities he had planned for later that night. Assuming, of course, he really was going to come back to Amelia Clarke's house with the express purpose of raping her to death under the guise of a vengeful legionary.

'You tell me,' John said. 'This _is_ a test of your skills, remember? And you're already down ten percent of the pay out.'

'I remember,' Gaz said sullenly before cocking his head to the side, thinking. 'Once it gets dark, probably, and everyone's gone to bed or heading inside for the night. There won't be anyone left on the streets to remember him. Even if there are and they do, they might just assume he's some drunk stumbling home from a nearby bar and struggling with his keys as he picks the lock.'

John nodded once at the assessment Gaz had provided, all of it pretty much lining up with his assumptions of what Swallow would do if, or when, he returned here. He had already scoped out the approach to Amelia's house from the front so that would be the most likely entry point, especially as there looked to be a warehouse or factory sitting behind her home. Approaching from that angle would require him to slip past whatever security forces were protecting the premises, increasing the chances of being seen, and he figured Swallow was doing everything in his power to avoid being seen by anyone.

'So what's the plan?' John asked.

'We stay here until it gets dark,' Gaz said. 'Then head back into the house and keep watch from the living room. We know which house is Amelia's, and we know that she's alone, so if anyone goes up to her door then it's probably not going to be her other half coming home.

'Once he's inside, I dunno, I guess we wait a few minutes to make sure that we catch him in the act of tying her up or beating her. It's hard to worm your way out of explaining that away.'

'And subduing him?'

'I'll try to avoid killing him, but with the shit he's done I won't lose sleep over shooting him dead.'

* * *

They waited until the sun set and the street lights came on, those that worked casting soft pools of yellowed light all along the street and offering brief respites from the darkness that now blanketed Shady Sands, and retired inside the house where they relocated their eyrie to the living room, peering out through the glass at Amelia's house as they waited for Swallow to turn up.

John had carried out such stakeouts multiple times before, both in his role as a soldier and a bounty hunter, and barely felt his heartbeat increase by any noticeable degree as he crouched in the darkness. Gaz, though, was another story as he shifted from foot to foot on a regular basis, his breathing quick and shallow, and clenched and unclenched his hands as the time for action crept ever closer. He was nervous, John knew, and eager to end the crime spree of a sick and sadistic person. It was a feeling the elder bounty hunter knew well, recalling the first few times he had gone for a mark after days and weeks of following their trail and either building a case against them or getting everything he needed into place to bring them down in a firefight.

'Focus,' he muttered quietly, never once taking his eyes off Amelia Clarke's front door. 'You won't be able to handle that revolver properly if you're wound up too much.'

'I know,' Gaz whispered back. 'I just really want to catch this guy.'

'So focus,' John said. 'And calm down. You can't let emotions cloud your judgement at times like this. Act rashly enough and Swallow might slip away before you get a chance to apprehend him.'

'Okay,' Gaz said, forcing himself to take a long, calming breath. 'Good way to get the blood pumping, innit?'

'The first few times, sure,' John said with a noncommittal shrug. 'But you get used to it after a while.'

'Okay,' Gaz said again as he took another, deeper calming breath as he reached for the revolver on his hip and cycled the chamber, visually confirming it held an unfired round in each chamber and holstering it once he was done.

Then they settled into another long game of waiting for Swallow to show, watching each end of the street for any sign of the man which the darkness made a hard task to accomplish, but not impossible. Even if a person took a deliberate path to avoid being caught in the dim glow of the streetlights, their blackened outline would still stick out as they blocked the light depending on the angle they were viewed from. It was probably only good fortune that meant the house Gaz and John had occupied was right in the middle of the street, giving them decent angles from both approaches Swallow might use.

Once he appeared, of course.

'What are you going to use the money for?' John asked after a long period of silence.

'The money?' Gaz repeated, only to shrug. 'I dunno, better equipment I guess. Armour, maybe, like yours.'

'Still sticking with the revolver?'

'Yeah, for the moment. I might trade it out for something else.'

'Semi-automatic would be my recommendation,' John said. 'Quick rate of fire, quicker reload, plentiful ammunition. Useful qualities to be had if you're going after bounties with itchy trigger fingers.'

'But I kinda like the imagery of it all,' Gaz said. 'A gunslinger of old.'

John rolled his eyes. 'Like I said before, those guys that deliberately model themselves on bounty hunters of old only go after the targets they know they can catch. I bet I take on two or three times as many targets as them. You could too, you know.'

'I guess,' Gaz said. 'Did you ever feel like dressing up like them, though? You know, when you first started out.'

'No,' John said with a shake of his head. 'I was a soldier before this, remember? We usually operated under the KISS principle because it got us the most bang for our buck.'

'KISS?'

'Keep it simple, stupid,' John said. 'The more moving parts a plan has, the greater the chance it has to fail. More points of failure. All you really need to make it as a bounty hunter is a sharp mind and a reliable firearm, of which I had both. Why spoil the formula by adding stuff I don't need, like a duster or lever action rifles?'

'For fun,' Gaz said. 'Just a little.'

'Ours isn't really the kind of profession where you can afford to sacrifice efficiency for a little fun,' John said. 'It's better to do the job quick and properly, take the scumbags down as soon as, then enjoy myself afterwards.'

'And how do you do that?' Gaz asked.

'A drink or two, usually,' John said before shrugging. 'On those rare occasions I allow myself any kind of long break. Usually I just get another bounty and go after that, but that's more because I was always on the move when I was enlisted and you kinda get used to the idea of always doing something.'

Gaz nodded absently in the darkness at that, then cocked his head to the side as he thought about something.

'I'd probably find a whorehouse,' he said a moment later.

'Not a bad idea,' John said. 'So long as it's a clean one.'

They both smiled faintly at that and settled back into watching and waiting again, eyes panning side to side up and down the street. Several shadowy figures had come and gone in the time they were talking but none made any moves towards the house they were watching over, but John found his eye latching onto one in particular as they ambled down the street towards the store he and Gaz had sat outside of just yesterday, a frown creasing his features.

'That guy,' John said, pointing at the person his interest was one. 'I've seen him before.'

'What, a figure deep in shadow?' Gaz muttered. 'Now where could we have seen that before?'

'No, his gait and posture,' John said. 'He's been up and down the street three times now in the past hour. It's either Swallow or some other criminal looking to break into someone's house.'

As soon as he mentioned Swallow's name Gaz sat bolt upright, hand drifting for the revolver on his hip, and John had to motion for him to stay put as they locked both their attention onto the unknown figure as they moved down the street again, away from Amelia Clarke's house, and out of sight but barely ten minutes later, they reappeared coming back and towards where she lived, their pace ever so slightly slower.

John nodded almost imperceptibly as they began drifting towards the house, passing through a patch of light that showed they were dressed in rags with a hood pulled up and over their head, hiding their face from view, but the build and height was almost exactly like that of Jules Swallow, and that of thousands of other men John had to remind himself.

'Wait,' John breathed as Gaz tensed again.

The figure paused just before the path leading to Amelia Clarke's house and did a careful, final survey of the area in search of witnesses that might see them break in and then, satisfied there was nobody around, started down the rough dirt path as their hand dipped into a pocket for a lockpick or a bump key. It was hard to tell from a distance and in the darkness, though John was certain it was one of the two. Anything else would be too loud for a stealthy intrusion like this person was going for.

He watched as the person, who could be nobody else but Jules Swallow, reached the front door and did some fiddling with the handle ahead of grasping and twisting it, the door moving before them, and they passed over threshold into the house. Gaz made a move to stand but John stopped him, taking firm hold of his arm and hauling him back into a kneeling position.

'Wait,' he said again. 'Another fifteen minutes, at least. We need to catch him in the act of either tying her up, or beating her. Otherwise he might weasel his way out of any allegations. And I _don't_ want him to do that.'


End file.
